Okay, I'm gonna say it. You don't need a power trowel for every single garage floor. I did a 24x24 in Spokane last week with just a bull float and a hand trowel, and the finish is flawless. The obsession with machines for small slabs is wasting money and creating a worse finish if you're not careful.

2 comments

2 Comments

But how much time did that actually add to the job? A power trowel on a slab that size would have been done in a fraction of the time. For a working crew, that lost time is real money.

tyler_fox4115h ago

Exactly. We did a 28x30 shop floor by hand last month because the power trowel was down. The crew finished maybe an hour later than planned, but the cream was perfect. No burn marks, no waves. Sometimes the machine just beats the surface up too much on a smaller pour. You get a better feel for the concrete with a hand trowel.